John Wesley's Notes on the Bible

John Wesley (1703–1791) wrote his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament in 1754, during an illness that kept him from his usual travels, and published them the following year. Ten years later, at the urging of his people, he added the Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765). Together with his published sermons, the Notes became the doctrinal standard of the Methodist movement, the measure by which its preachers were to be judged.

Wesley's aim was to be brief and plain. He wrote, as he said, for "plain unlettered men, who understand only their mother tongue." In the New Testament he leaned on the Greek text and commentary of Bengel, whom he admired above all other scholars; in the Old Testament he drew largely on Matthew Henry and Matthew Poole, condensing them and adding his own remarks. He was honest about the difficulty of the second task, as his preface shows:

About ten years ago I was prevailed upon to publish Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. When that work was begun, and indeed when it was finished, I had no design to attempt anything farther of the kind. Nay, I had a full determination, Not to do it, being throughly fatigued with the immense labour (had it been only this; tho' this indeed was but a small part of it,) of writing twice over a Quarto book containing seven or eight hundred pages.

But this was scarce published before I was importuned to write Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament. This importunity I have withstood for many years.

The notes are short, and they say what Wesley thought. His comment on John 3:16 states the Arminian position in three lines:

God so loved the world - That is, all men under heaven; even those that despise his love, and will for that cause finally perish. Otherwise not to believe would be no sin to them. For what should they believe? Ought they to believe that Christ was given for them? Then he was given for them. He gave his only Son - Truly and seriously. And the Son of God gave himself, Ga 4:4, truly and seriously.

The SwordSearcher module contains both sets of notes, keyed to the King James text, covering all sixty-six books in more than 17,000 entries, with Wesley's prefaces to each Testament. The Old Testament notes are fuller on some books than others. Readers who want the Methodist tradition at greater length have Clarke, Benson, Coke, and Sutcliffe in the same library. Many of Wesley's sermons are included in Great Preaching of the Faith.